Comment to 'Pro Apps for Free?'
Comment to Pro Apps for Free?

  • I know I'm totally late to the party here, but want to input my two cents anyway. I think this is a great idea - but the wording I'd use is that it's a "free trial." Depending on the speed of updates, it could be marketed as a year-long free trial - which sounds incredibly generous.

    I do Wordpress based web development quite a lot, but I can't really code beyond basic HTML/CSS. I will spend HOURS reading through the documentation on a paid plugin before purchasing. Then I'll purchase it, and the thing I thought I could do with it doesn't seem to be possible. I'll spend hours more frustratedly trying to get the plugin to operate the way I thought it would. If it were a free plugin I'd just delete it and go back to the repository, but I PAID for the dang thing so I'm going to try everything before giving up! This has happened again and again - to the point that I'm REALLY gun-shy about purchasing paid plugins of any kind, simply because it might mean BOTH money and time down the drain, because I was confused about something.

    With UNA, it's really difficult to figure out which collection of apps you need for the exact functionality you want on your site. I've just spent days installing and uninstalling a bunch of free ones to try to muddle it out, and I'm still not 100% sure! Because it's so hard to figure out which ones we need, it means we're limited to free apps until I finish learning how UNA works. Paying for an app or two is doable (and we want to support UNA) but paying for apps we won't use is of course a problem!

    • Hello @Indie Sellers Guild !

      Typically, the recommended approach for achieving desired outcomes on your website involves clearly defining functionalities, thoroughly understanding module descriptions, and seeking clarification from module vendors through pertinent inquiries.

      • Thank you for the quick response, @LeonidS!

        I think the struggle I have when building web sites/applications is I'm often trying to build things that don't exist yet - haha there is a saying "wine taste on a beer budget" - I have "developer taste on a no-code budget". Whatever software I'm using to create whatever I'm creating, I am pushing to the ABSOLUTE limits of its capabilities, because the idea for what I want to build is brand new! And I'm building something for fun, or to help people, or for my creative small business, and unfortunately, I can't afford to hire someone and so my own skills are all I have access to!

        I try really hard to not waste a developer's time with what I'm concerned will be dumb questions - so if there is an option to just install software and spend a bunch of time myself trying to figure something out, that is what I prefer! But from your response, it seems like UNA had to cancel the "Pro Apps for Free" plan - I'm guessing because there were too many ways unscrupulous users could just keep getting all the apps for free by manually downloading the updates, and you couldn't lose the income stream? Of course you must do what is best for UNA!

        Finally, I want to mention that when I said UNA was difficult to figure out, I did not mean that as a criticism of the software - honestly I see the difficulty as a byproduct of UNA's best feature: customizability. I'm writing documentation to explain what UNA is and how it works for our members, and that's the first thing I say about it, lol!

        UNA is designed to empower people to create community-owned alternatives to any major social media platform (or something brand new that contains any combination of features found in major social media platforms.) Customizability is the name of the game, and that customizability is achieved by installing the exact correct combination of modules, and configuring them to function in the exact way you want.

        We're building a site with some heavy customizations, and that's where the difficulty level comes in.